SanDisk unveils thumb-sized 64GB iSSD that weighs less than a gram

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Flash memory maker SanDisk has unveiled a new 64GB solid state drive (SSD) that measures just 16mmx20mmx1.85mm, which is no bigger than a postage stamp. The company calls it an integrated SSD (or iSSD) as it’s small enough to be embedded on tiny printed circuit boards found in tablets, smartphones, and ultra-thin notebooks. It weighs less than a gram.

Since SSD technology uses no moving parts and provides excellent responsiveness and durability, the new thumb-sized package could be theoretically soldered onto a hard drive’s circuit board for a convenient hybrid drive configuration. It supports SATA interface and claims sequential read and write speeds of up to 160MB/sec and 100MB/sec, respectively – “fast enough” to boot an operating system, SanDisk said.

The company hopes the new chip will enable way thinner and lighter tablet and notebook designs without any performance penalty.

SanDisk will offer the new iSDD module in capacities ranging from 4GB to 64GB at prices “dependent upon the quantity ordered.”

Speak Your Mind

hodar

Love the idea, love the size with a single caveat.

As a consumer, I never want to see this device. It’s too small, and too easy to lose. 64 Gig is a LOT of data, and it’s a lot of data to lose because of a hole in my pockets, it fell out of my hands, it blew away in the wind, so on and so forth.

Personally, I want removeable memory modules to be not much smaller than the micro-SD. Even that form factor is pushing the limits of human ergonomics. As we get older, we misplace things – and the smaller they are the harder they are to keep track of.

I’m still searching for my 7mm socket with the 0.25 inch drive. And that’s a lot larger than this module, but thankfully far less expensive to replace.

Meep

@Hogar
Those kinds of things are usually taken into account though, and as far as we consumers are concerned, we’re more likely to see this thing integrated in slimmer, lighter electronics.

IsOnANeedToKnowBasis

This device would not be a removable storage device. As stated in the article, this would be integrated on to either the motherboard of a device or soldered onto an existing hard drive for a hybrid storage unit.

The SATA6 interface is cute, but I’d rather see a PCI x32 interface and (better) direct HyperTransport interface at 32 bits. This is memory and I want to see it talking more directly to memory – access the memory and treat this kind of thing as a very big cache at the sub-OS level.

The “disk” interface was already the bottleneck in PC architecture but moving to SATA6 and USB3 doesn’t resolve it, the time has come to go straight to PCIe and HyperTransport and treat “disk” as what it actually is, a pile of chips that are used to cache DDR3+ RAM.

For those who insist on putting a CPU and OS and other overhead in the way between “disk” and “memory”, an increasingly stupid idea, it’s not infeasible to imagine a few dozen SATA6 RAIDs inside a single PCIe x16 card with capacities in the terabytes and speeds over one gigabyte/second (where only PhotoFast has gone so far).

SSDs should also just cache themselves to the spinning metal with a SATA6 and USB3 and 10Gb Ethernet (and Light Peak?) interface on the SSD itself. Just treat all access to everything as if it were RAM, as if you had terabytes of RAM, let the hardware do the rest. The “hybrid SSD” approach is the right one, just carry it further and hide the network drive accesses and even most LAN and Internet access. We’re already sticking bittorrent code on our routers…

Remember we’re a year or two away from seeing this chip in devices.
Fast storage like this will be a nice match to your 10Gb/s Light Peak connection (when it arrives in 2018) or your 5.5 Gb/s (dual gigabit teamed ethernet + G.9960 powerline 1Gb + cat3 1Gb + coax 1 Gb + 500 mbps wireless-N) which you can do next year with Atheros 7400, Gigle 551 or Marvell DS2 chipsets already in production.